What retro activity did you get up to today?

[bjwil1991]

Friday: installed the Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro 16 drivers for Windows 95C on my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus and removed the XT-IDE Universal BIOS chip from the network card, gutted a broken PSU that worked for a while and it quit working one day and MacGyvered it (bent the sides at a 90 degree-ish angle) to fit the CHiLL Wave Table board with my Yamaha DB50XG installed, hooked up the switching power supply, the MIDI cable from the Roland MT-32, and the RCA to 3.5mm jack audio cable to my MPU-401 clone card and it works. Had to change the GSPLAY.CFG for the MIDI addresses: IRQ and I/O Address and the type from SB to MPU401 to get the files to play and the reset SYX commands sent to the Roland MT-32 and the Yamaha DB50XG.

Saturday: went to a local game shop I've never been to before until then and hooked up my SNES/N64/GameCube, PS1, Genesis Model 1, and Original Xbox using the new Hyperkin HDTV adapters and set my DVDO Edge to 4:3 mode, as well as the HDTV cables for the PS1/PS2, SNES/N64/GameCube, and Genesis Model 1. I also sprayed DeoxIt D5 on my Original Xbox's IDE ribbon cable as it displayed a code error 09 for missing drive parameters and the DVD drive read a disk and stopped reading them after that and I also fixed the issue where the DVD drive would get stuck without a disk in the drive with 70% Isopropyl alcohol and a Q-tip soaked in it to fix the belt and clean the tracks on the tray itself. I also swapped the DVD-RW drives in my dad's computer as it would try to rip a CD onto iTunes and it stops getting detected and even the drive I swapped it with didn't work either. I cleaned the SATA cable with my DeoxIt D5 and the CD was ripped successfully after that. I placed the other DVD drive that was in there into my Socket 370 build using the SATA to IDE adapter I bought months ago as the DVD drive that was in there refused to read any disk I placed inside. I had to change the jumper on the CD-RW drive to slave as the SATA to IDE only has master as a setting and no jumper to switch it from master to slave, but, it works and I switched the drive letters so the DVD-RW shows as Drive E and the CD-RW as Drive D.

The Genesis cable does support the Master System and Nomad (don't have either yet) easily.

I should get a better power brick for my SNES and Genesis as the ones I have don't have UL listed on there, which is a big no-no in the USA to not have such label. My RCA Switching power supply that does voltages from 6V-12V AC or DC is ETL and UL listed, and SA listed. Too bad they don't make adapters that fit into the SNES. Heck, I can MacGyver one safely by crimping the wires together and heatshrink them with electrical tape going around in case bare metal is exposed, but, that won't necessarily be a good idea. eBay, here I come.

[Tiido]

I spent a while setting up my new 286 machine, using the board from Keropi ~


I had to cut the hole bigger to fit the MHz display, there were none in the chassis and none of the ones I had lying around fit there...
Another curious thing is that Trident 8900D won't run at all in the machine, no POST... 9000i-1 and 9000i-3 do, and 3 is really really slow compared to 1, regardless of jumper settings. 8900D is faster but it is a shame it won't work, it is the second fastest ISA card I have, fastest is WD90C30 that sits in my 386 machine.
I also made more or less exact length cables. First cable for floppy failed, it couldn't read or write even though motors came on, second went perfectly. I also found that few of my CD drives cause the machine to stop booting when connected, but those drives work perfectly on newer stuff.
ATX PSU got converted into an AT one aswell.
MS-DOS installation just completed, time to add various software on the thing ~

[kolderman]

Finished my s370 mATX near-silent sleeper today, and I quite like the result.

- soyo 7vem
- via c3 750mhz@100fsb
- voodoo3 pci with fan mod
- audician32
- 256mb pc133
- 120gb WD green ssd
- win98se

Also got out my MU2000 which I had sitting in a box for years, and it sounds glorious. I think it will sound even better if I can set it in GS mode instead of GM.

[retropol]

Finished my humble gaming room/mancave. Still need to sort out some issues again with my 386

hey, I remember these speakers from my teenage years. Want to buy it, however I dont know what brand / how to identify them to find in any auction or whatever.
Can you tell me what is the brand / producer / etc of this speakers? Anyone here who have the same speakers / other branding?

[wiretap]

Can you tell me what is the brand / producer / etc of this speakers? Anyone here who have the same speakers / other branding?

Looks like these, although they might be a rebrand: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Active-95A-Mul ... SwASBdGp0p

And another: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Juster ... 0010.m2109

Brand new: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Juster ... .l4275.c10

[PcBytes]

Managed to fix a PC (well, almost) that came with a interesting (and bizzare) Socket 478 on a 423 adapter.

First off. DUST. Sweet Jesus Christ almighty, I think I've inhaled at least 10kg of dust from that thing.
Then, motherboard was nearly dead. FDN338 transistor up in smoke along with a 3055 regulator for the RAM slots. An dead ASUS P5K\SE EPU and a dead H55 motherboard proved to be helpful in replacing the components, and I got the board to finally POST.

Finally, I noticed something absolutely awry, and it's REALLY hard for me to believe - all components, except the board, were dated 2007. How is it in any way possible to sell such a machine (Willamette based Celeron) in 2007, with just 256MB of SDRAM, a ATI Rage XL 8MB PCI and a 56k modem? By 2007, I'd expect to see at least a DDR2 board in there.

[kolderman]

More to the point, what OS was running on 256mb in 2007?

[PcBytes]

Haven't checked the drive yet, but if I'd be to say, probably XP SP2 or SP3. That's what I usually found, unless it's been upgraded over the time to Windows 7. The drive is a 80GB Maxtor, so any of these two is possible to be in there.

EDIT: Yeah, I was right. XP SP3, and it's running dog slow. Oh well, maybe I'll drop in a good actual Willie and install 2000 Server. Oh, and TOP on my checklist, is to replace that nightmarish Spire fan. Sweet god, I got a headache after just 2 minutes of using it.

[bjwil1991]

Does anyone know why Direct3D doesn't work with my Ti4400 or VooDoo2 card? I get these messages hen I try to run the Direct3D:

Ti4400
Direct3D 7 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x887602eb (error code)
Direct3D 8 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x8876086a (3D not available)
Direct3D 9 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x8876086a (3D not available)

VooDoo2
Direct3D 7 test results: Failure at step 46 (GetDC): HRESULT = 0x88760249 (Can't create DC)
Direct3D 8 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x8876086a (3D not available)

I reinstalled Windows 98SE (files copied over), reinstalled the nVidia drivers, and still nothing. The nVidia Control Panel says the nVidia card is running on AGP 2x while the BIOS is set to 4x mode and DXDIAG shows the video memory as 2.5MB instead of 128MB.

[TheAbandonwareGuy]

Does anyone know why Direct3D doesn't work with my Ti4400 or VooDoo2 card? I get these messages hen I try to run the Direct3D:

Ti4400
Direct3D 7 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x887602eb (error code)
Direct3D 8 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x8876086a (3D not available)
Direct3D 9 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x8876086a (3D not available)

VooDoo2
Direct3D 7 test results: Failure at step 46 (GetDC): HRESULT = 0x88760249 (Can't create DC)
Direct3D 8 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x8876086a (3D not available)

I reinstalled Windows 98SE (files copied over), reinstalled the nVidia drivers, and still nothing. The nVidia Control Panel says the nVidia card is running on AGP 2x while the BIOS is set to 4x mode and DXDIAG shows the video memory as 2.5MB instead of 128MB.

Sounds like that OS is screwed. I would verify the cards functionality with another machine.

[appiah4]

Finished setting up my 386SX-25 with MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0, then installed about two dozen 87-89 games on it.

It's the oldest computer I have but I feel fairly unsympathetic to it for some reason; its game library overlaps greatly with my Amiga computers and I have found it good for very little software.

Speaking of Amiga, I upgraded my A500's Denise to a Super Denise so now it's officially an ECS computer. At 42MHz it really makes my 386 somewhat obsolete. Maybe I should add a MIDI card to my 386 and use it with Munt-Pi and that could help differentiate it a bit.

[kalm_traveler]

practiced soldering a DVI port on an old TNT2 AGP card that came in a Dell Optiplex PIII workstation I picked up recently but upgraded to a 256mb Geforce 6200.

I was actually hopeful that the DVI port would be functional once soldered in as pretty much all possible pads are occupied, and many of the traces from the DVI pins clearly go through circuitry but alas - no video signal seems to be coming out.

[bjwil1991]

Sometimes, there needs to be a series of capacitors and resistors for the DVI port to function or is disabled in the video BIOS and possibly needs an upgrade to the latest one.

[kalm_traveler]

Sometimes, there needs to be a series of capacitors and resistors for the DVI port to function or is disabled in the video BIOS and possibly needs an upgrade to the latest one.

Yeah I think you're right about the BIOS. Since pretty much every possible solder pad is already occupied I figured there was a chance it might just work. This also is a Dell part so it might need a specific BIOS.

I ended up just tossing the card as it was really just a project for me to practice soldering the DVI connector in preparation for converting my Quadro 4000 SDI to dual DVI out (the SDI card plugs into an upward-facing DVI port, so it is already physically there but I need to swap it out with a right-angle port).

[badmojo]

It's the oldest computer I have but I feel fairly unsympathetic to it for some reason; its game library overlaps greatly with my Amiga computers and I have found it good for very little software.

Yes I'm with ya, my 386 and 286 - and even my 486 for the most part - were fun to build but I rarely go to the trouble of hauling their heavy arses out of the shed and use them.

[Mister Xiado]

More to the point, what OS was running on 256mb in 2007?

I'd have been running Win2K or a stripped down XP install with that much. Heck, according to my records, I was. Fancy that.

Considering making a small number of Windows 95 icons. I don't currently have a system with Win95 installed on it (just 3.11, 98, 7, and 10), so I'm dragging my feet on it. Ironically, it will be more difficult to work with more colors, and produce not-garbage results. Not to mention, 4 bit icons should be included, just for the sake of doing it properly. So, more than double the work.

[Murugan]

Finished my humble gaming room/mancave. Still need to sort out some issues again with my 386

hey, I remember these speakers from my teenage years. Want to buy it, however I dont know what brand / how to identify them to find in any auction or whatever.
Can you tell me what is the brand / producer / etc of this speakers? Anyone here who have the same speakers / other branding?

Hi AFAIK there are numerous brands with speakers like this. I have bought a second pair and it's different brand and also different Wattage. If you want I can look this afternoon.
Those on Ebay are really expensive . I bought mine for 5€ each,second handed.

Yesterday I started my P4 2.0 build from all the spare parts I have. What else do you do with spare parts :p

[alvaro84]

Went through that HDD box worth of 512kbit cache chips, using my new PCChips M912 and an Am5x86. Last time I had a lot of time for such things I did the same with my 256kbit chips.
The board came with 256k of really shitty cache, btw. It couldn't take the fastest timings, not even at 33MHz. After the first few rounds I set the bar to 50MHz/3-1-1-1/1WS write and threw away everything that couldn't run a Doom timedemo. Now I have a pile of cache to take back for recycling, and another pile of keepers.

None could do 2-1-1-1/0 at 50MHz, btw. Even the best exhibited texture errors in Doom. Most couldn't even start it (or boot DOS to begin with).

40MHz 2-1-1-1/0 is imperative but it shouldn't be a problem for the remaining chips. I don't want to go through another round...

Oh, and tried 3*60MHz too. A bit unstable at 3.3V but seems to work nicely at 4V.

It was yesterday. Today, I don't know yet. I'm on a short holiday, I plan to go out on a bicycle ride.

[Thermalwrong]

Today I discovered that someone made a standalone OPL2 / OPL3 vgm player: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4uoOnVM3_w

So there's another thing to draw my interest once I've got through a few of my othyer projects

[appiah4]

It's the oldest computer I have but I feel fairly unsympathetic to it for some reason; its game library overlaps greatly with my Amiga computers and I have found it good for very little software.

Yes I'm with ya, my 386 and 286 - and even my 486 for the most part - were fun to build but I rarely go to the trouble of hauling their heavy arses out of the shed and use them.

I guess once you go Amiga, there's no going back

I may try to do some DOS networking with this PC and try to get it to work with my Munt-Pi without SoftMPU (using Keropi's Music Quest card) to differentiate it more I guess.